________________________________________________
_ The next morning he looked over the papers and waded through a
long list of advertisements, making a few notes. Then he turned
to the male-help-wanted column, but with disagreeable feelings.
The day was before him--a long day in which to discover
something--and this was how he must begin to discover. He
scanned the long column, which mostly concerned bakers,
bushelmen, cooks, compositors, drivers, and the like, finding two
things only which arrested his eye. One was a cashier wanted in
a wholesale furniture house, and the other a salesman for a
whiskey house. He had never thought of the latter. At once he
decided to look that up.
The firm in question was Alsbery & Co., whiskey brokers.
He was admitted almost at once to the manager on his appearance.
"Good-morning, sir," said the latter, thinking at first that he
was encountering one of his out-of-town customers.
"Good-morning," said Hurstwood. "You advertised, I believe, for
a salesman?"
"Oh," said the man, showing plainly the enlightenment which had
come to him. "Yes. Yes, I did."
"I thought I'd drop in," said Hurstwood, with dignity. "I've had
some experience in that line myself."
"Oh, have you?" said the man. "What experience have you had?"
"Well, I've managed several liquor houses in my time. Recently I
owned a third-interest in a saloon at Warren and Hudson streets."
"I see," said the man.
Hurstwood ceased, waiting for some suggestion.
"We did want a salesman," said the man. "I don't know as it's
anything you'd care to take hold of, though."
"I see," said Hurstwood. "Well, I'm in no position to choose,
just at present. If it were open, I should be glad to get it."
The man did not take kindly at all to his "No position to
choose." He wanted some one who wasn't thinking of a choice or
something better. Especially not an old man. He wanted some one
young, active, and glad to work actively for a moderate sum.
Hurstwood did not please him at all. He had more of an air than
his employers.
"Well," he said in answer, "we'd be glad to consider your
application. We shan't decide for a few days yet. Suppose you
send us your references."
"I will," said Hurstwood.
He nodded good-morning and came away. At the corner he looked at
the furniture company's address, and saw that it was in West
Twenty-third Street. Accordingly, he went up there. The place
was not large enough, however. It looked moderate, the men in it
idle and small salaried. He walked by, glancing in, and then
decided not to go in there.
"They want a girl, probably, at ten a week," he said.
At one o'clock he thought of eating, and went to a restaurant in
Madison Square. There he pondered over places which he might
look up. He was tired. It was blowing up grey again. Across
the way, through Madison Square Park, stood the great hotels,
looking down upon a busy scene. He decided to go over to the
lobby of one and sit a while. It was warm in there and bright.
He had seen no one he knew at the Broadway Central. In all
likelihood he would encounter no one here. Finding a seat on one
of the red plush divans close to the great windows which look out
on Broadway's busy rout, he sat musing. His state did not seem
so bad in here. Sitting still and looking out, he could take
some slight consolation in the few hundred dollars he had in his
purse. He could forget, in a measure, the weariness of the
street and his tiresome searches. Still, it was only escape from
a severe to a less severe state. He was still gloomy and
disheartened. There, minutes seemed to go very slowly. An hour
was a long, long time in passing. It was filled for him with
observations and mental comments concerning the actual guests of
the hotel, who passed in and out, and those more prosperous
pedestrians whose good fortune showed in their clothes and
spirits as they passed along Broadway, outside. It was nearly
the first time since he had arrived in the city that his leisure
afforded him ample opportunity to contemplate this spectacle.
Now, being, perforce, idle himself, he wondered at the activity
of others. How gay were the youths he saw, how pretty the women.
Such fine clothes they all wore. They were so intent upon
getting somewhere. He saw coquettish glances cast by magnificent
girls. Ah, the money it required to train with such--how well he
knew! How long it had been since he had had the opportunity to do
so!
The clock outside registered four. It was a little early, but he
thought he would go back to the flat.
This going back to the flat was coupled with the thought that
Carrie would think he was sitting around too much if he came home
early. He hoped he wouldn't have to, but the day hung heavily on
his hands. Over there he was on his own ground. He could sit in
his rocking-chair and read. This busy, distracting, suggestive
scene was shut out. He could read his papers. Accordingly, he
went home. Carrie was reading, quite alone. It was rather dark
in the flat, shut in as it was.
"You'll hurt your eyes," he said when he saw her.
After taking off his coat, he felt it incumbent upon him to make
some little report of his day.
"I've been talking with a wholesale liquor company," he said. "I
may go on the road."
"Wouldn't that be nice!" said Carrie.
"It wouldn't be such a bad thing," he answered.
Always from the man at the corner now he bought two papers--the
"Evening World" and "Evening Sun." So now he merely picked his
papers up, as he came by, without stopping.
He drew up his chair near the radiator and lighted the gas. Then
it was as the evening before. His difficulties vanished in the
items he so well loved to read.
The next day was even worse than the one before, because now he
could not think of where to go. Nothing he saw in the papers he
studied--till ten o'clock--appealed to him. He felt that he
ought to go out, and yet he sickened at the thought. Where to,
where to?
"You mustn't forget to leave me my money for this week," said
Carrie, quietly.
They had an arrangement by which he placed twelve dollars a week
in her hands, out of which to pay current expenses. He heaved a
little sigh as she said this, and drew out his purse. Again he
felt the dread of the thing. Here he was taking off, taking off,
and nothing coming in.
"Lord!" he said, in his own thoughts, "this can't go on."
To Carrie he said nothing whatsoever. She could feel that her
request disturbed him. To pay her would soon become a
distressing thing.
"Yet, what have I got to do with it?" she thought. "Oh, why
should I be made to worry?"
Hurstwood went out and made for Broadway. He wanted to think up
some place. Before long, though, he reached the Grand Hotel at
Thirty-first Street. He knew of its comfortable lobby. He was
cold after his twenty blocks' walk.
"I'll go in their barber shop and get a shave," he thought.
Thus he justified himself in sitting down in here after his
tonsorial treatment.
Again, time hanging heavily on his hands, he went home early, and
this continued for several days, each day the need to hunt
paining him, and each day disgust, depression, shamefacedness
driving him into lobby idleness.
At last three days came in which a storm prevailed, and he did
not go out at all. The snow began to fall late one afternoon.
It was a regular flurry of large, soft, white flakes. In the
morning it was still coming down with a high wind, and the papers
announced a blizzard. From out the front windows one could see a
deep, soft bedding.
"I guess I'll not try to go out to-day," he said to Carrie at
breakfast. "It's going to be awful bad, so the papers say."
"The man hasn't brought my coal, either," said Carrie, who
ordered by the bushel.
"I'll go over and see about it," said Hurstwood. This was the
first time he had ever suggested doing an errand, but, somehow,
the wish to sit about the house prompted it as a sort of
compensation for the privilege.
All day and all night it snowed, and the city began to suffer
from a general blockade of traffic. Great attention was given to
the details of the storm by the newspapers, which played up the
distress of the poor in large type.
Hurstwood sat and read by his radiator in the corner. He did not
try to think about his need of work. This storm being so
terrific, and tying up all things, robbed him of the need. He
made himself wholly comfortable and toasted his feet.
Carrie observed his ease with some misgiving. For all the fury
of the storm she doubted his comfort. He took his situation too
philosophically.
Hurstwood, however, read on and on. He did not pay much
attention to Carrie. She fulfilled her household duties and said
little to disturb him.
The next day it was still snowing, and the next, bitter cold.
Hurstwood took the alarm of the paper and sat still. Now he
volunteered to do a few other little things. One was to go to
the butcher, another to the grocery. He really thought nothing
of these little services in connection with their true
significance. He felt as if he were not wholly useless--indeed,
in such a stress of weather, quite worth while about the house.
On the fourth day, however, it cleared, and he read that the
storm was over. Now, however, he idled, thinking how sloppy the
streets would be.
It was noon before he finally abandoned his papers and got under
way. Owing to the slightly warmer temperature the streets were
bad. He went across Fourteenth Street on the car and got a
transfer south on Broadway. One little advertisement he had,
relating to a saloon down in Pearl Street. When he reached the
Broadway Central, however, he changed his mind.
"What's the use?" he thought, looking out upon the slop and snow.
"I couldn't buy into it. It's a thousand to one nothing comes of
it. I guess I'll get off," and off he got. In the lobby he took
a seat and waited again, wondering what he could do.
While he was idly pondering, satisfied to be inside, a well-
dressed man passed up the lobby, stopped, looked sharply, as if
not sure of his memory, and then approached. Hurstwood
recognised Cargill, the owner of the large stables in Chicago of
the same name, whom he had last seen at Avery Hall, the night
Carrie appeared there. The remembrance of how this individual
brought up his wife to shake hands on that occasion was also on
the instant clear.
Hurstwood was greatly abashed. His eyes expressed the difficulty
he felt.
"Why, it's Hurstwood!" said Cargill, remembering now, and sorry
that he had not recognised him quickly enough in the beginning to
have avoided this meeting.
"Yes," said Hurstwood. "How are you?"
"Very well," said Cargill, troubled for something to talk about.
"Stopping here?"
"No," said Hurstwood, "just keeping an appointment."
"I knew you had left Chicago. I was wondering what had become of
you."
"Oh, I'm here now," answered Hurstwood, anxious to get away.
"Doing well, I suppose?"
"Excellent."
"Glad to hear it."
They looked at one another, rather embarrassed.
"Well, I have an engagement with a friend upstairs. I'll leave
you. So long."
Hurstwood nodded his head.
"Damn it all," he murmured, turning toward the door. "I knew
that would happen."
He walked several blocks up the street. His watch only
registered 1.30. He tried to think of some place to go or
something to do. The day was so bad he wanted only to be inside.
Finally his feet began to feel wet and cold, and he boarded a
car. This took him to Fifty-ninth Street, which was as good as
anywhere else. Landed here, he turned to walk back along Seventh
Avenue, but the slush was too much. The misery of lounging about
with nowhere to go became intolerable. He felt as if he were
catching cold.
Stopping at a corner, he waited for a car south bound. This was
no day to be out; he would go home.
Carrie was surprised to see him at a quarter of three.
"It's a miserable day out," was all he said. Then he took off
his coat and changed his shoes.
That night he felt a cold coming on and took quinine. He was
feverish until morning, and sat about the next day while Carrie
waited on him. He was a helpless creature in sickness, not very
handsome in a dull-coloured bath gown and his hair uncombed. He
looked haggard about the eyes and quite old. Carrie noticed
this, and it did not appeal to her. She wanted to be good-
natured and sympathetic, but something about the man held her
aloof.
Toward evening he looked so badly in the weak light that she
suggested he go to bed.
"You'd better sleep alone," she said, "you'll feel better. I'll
open your bed for you now."
"All right," he said.
As she did all these things, she was in a most despondent state.
"What a life! What a life!" was her one thought.
Once during the day, when he sat near the radiator, hunched up
and reading, she passed through, and seeing him, wrinkled her
brows. In the front room, where it was not so warm, she sat by
the window and cried. This was the life cut out for her, was it?
To live cooped up in a small flat with some one who was out of
work, idle, and indifferent to her. She was merely a servant to
him now, nothing more.
This crying made her eyes red, and when, in preparing his bed,
she lighted the gas, and, having prepared it, called him in, he
noticed the fact.
"What's the matter with you?" he asked, looking into her face.
His voice was hoarse and his unkempt head only added to its
grewsome quality.
"Nothing," said Carrie, weakly.
"You've been crying," he said.
"I haven't, either," she answered.
It was not for love of him, that he knew.
"You needn't cry," he said, getting into bed. "Things will come
out all right."
In a day or two he was up again, but rough weather holding, he
stayed in. The Italian newsdealer now delivered the morning
papers, and these he read assiduously. A few times after that he
ventured out, but meeting another of his old-time friends, he
began to feel uneasy sitting about hotel corridors.
Every day he came home early, and at last made no pretence of
going anywhere. Winter was no time to look for anything.
Naturally, being about the house, he noticed the way Carrie did
things. She was far from perfect in household methods and
economy, and her little deviations on this score first caught his
eye. Not, however, before her regular demand for her allowance
became a grievous thing. Sitting around as he did, the weeks
seemed to pass very quickly. Every Tuesday Carrie asked for her
money.
"Do you think we live as cheaply as we might?" he asked one
Tuesday morning.
"I do the best I can," said Carrie.
Nothing was added to this at the moment, but the next day he
said:
"Do you ever go to the Gansevoort Market over here?"
"I didn't know there was such a market," said Carrie.
"They say you can get things lots cheaper there."
Carrie was very indifferent to the suggestion. These were things
which she did not like at all.
"How much do you pay for a pound of meat?" he asked one day.
"Oh, there are different prices," said Carrie. "Sirloin steak is
twenty-two cents."
"That's steep, isn't it?" he answered.
So he asked about other things, until finally, with the passing
days, it seemed to become a mania with him. He learned the
prices and remembered them.
His errand-running capacity also improved. It began in a small
way, of course. Carrie, going to get her hat one morning, was
stopped by him.
"Where are you going, Carrie?" he asked.
"Over to the baker's," she answered.
"I'd just as leave go for you," he said.
She acquiesced, and he went. Each afternoon he would go to the
corner for the papers.
"Is there anything you want?" he would say.
By degrees she began to use him. Doing this, however, she lost
the weekly payment of twelve dollars.
"You want to pay me to-day," she said one Tuesday, about this
time.
"How much?" he asked.
She understood well enough what it meant.
"Well, about five dollars," she answered. "I owe the coal man."
The same day he said:
"I think this Italian up here on the corner sells coal at twenty-
five cents a bushel. I'll trade with him."
Carrie heard this with indifference.
"All right," she said.
Then it came to be:
"George, I must have some coal to-day," or, "You must get some
meat of some kind for dinner."
He would find out what she needed and order.
Accompanying this plan came skimpiness.
"I only got a half-pound of steak," he said, coming in one
afternoon with his papers. "We never seem to eat very much."
These miserable details ate the heart out of Carrie. They
blackened her days and grieved her soul. Oh, how this man had
changed! All day and all day, here he sat, reading his papers.
The world seemed to have no attraction. Once in a while he would
go out, in fine weather, it might be four or five hours, between
eleven and four. She could do nothing but view him with gnawing
contempt.
It was apathy with Hurstwood, resulting from his inability to see
his way out. Each month drew from his small store. Now, he had
only five hundred dollars left, and this he hugged, half feeling
as if he could stave off absolute necessity for an indefinite
period. Sitting around the house, he decided to wear some old
clothes he had. This came first with the bad days. Only once he
apologised in the very beginning:
"It's so bad to-day, I'll just wear these around."
Eventually these became the permanent thing.
Also, he had been wont to pay fifteen cents for a shave, and a
tip of ten cents. In his first distress, he cut down the tip to
five, then to nothing. Later, he tried a ten-cent barber shop,
and, finding that the shave was satisfactory, patronised
regularly. Later still, he put off shaving to every other day,
then to every third, and so on, until once a week became the
rule. On Saturday he was a sight to see.
Of course, as his own self-respect vanished, it perished for him
in Carrie. She could not understand what had gotten into the
man. He had some money, he had a decent suit remaining, he was
not bad looking when dressed up. She did not forget her own
difficult struggle in Chicago, but she did not forget either that
she had never ceased trying. He never tried. He did not even
consult the ads in the papers any more.
Finally, a distinct impression escaped from her.
"What makes you put so much butter on the steak?" he asked her
one evening, standing around in the kitchen.
"To make it good, of course," she answered.
"Butter is awful dear these days," he suggested.
"You wouldn't mind it if you were working," she answered.
He shut up after this, and went in to his paper, but the retort
rankled in his mind. It was the first cutting remark that had
come from her.
That same evening, Carrie, after reading, went off to the front
room to bed. This was unusual. When Hurstwood decided to go, he
retired, as usual, without a light. It was then that he
discovered Carrie's absence.
"That's funny," he said; "maybe she's sitting up."
He gave the matter no more thought, but slept. In the morning
she was not beside him. Strange to say, this passed without
comment.
Night approaching, and a slightly more conversational feeling
prevailing, Carrie said:
"I think I'll sleep alone to-night. I have a headache."
"All right," said Hurstwood.
The third night she went to her front bed without apologies.
This was a grim blow to Hurstwood, but he never mentioned it.
"All right," he said to himself, with an irrepressible frown,
"let her sleep alone." _
Read next: CHAPTER XXXVI A GRIM RETROGRESSION--THE PHANTOM OF CHANCE
Read previous: CHAPTER XXXIV THE GRIND OF THE MILLSTONES--A SAMPLE OF CHAFF
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